Reviews: JessEm

I have been looking fo a router lift for the past couple of months. I found the JessEm and was planning on buying it after christmas. Woodcraft wanted $179.99 Rockler had it in there catalog for $149.99. My local Woodcraft put it on sale for christmas for $159.99. with that price I puchased it.I should have bought one years ago. I have had my router mounted in a router table for years and have never used it as much as I could have because it was such a pain to reach underneath and change...

I have been doing a lot of pocket hole joinery because I usually build shop furniture, jigs, etc. However, I wanted to make some things that did not have visible screw holes. I have a biscuit joiner but do not feel that would get the job done. That leaves dowels or m&t joints. I realize that most authorities say that m&t will provide the strongest joint with dowels a close second. However, for my uses, If the joint fails because over 500lbs of pressure was placed on it, my concern wi...

So I’ve used the router/table saw combination of doing mortise and tenon joinery, but for a kitchen island/table build I was looking at 32 mortises to cut on the six legs of the piece, plus 222 dowel holes for the slotted shelving and cross braces. Given the design, everything had to be very precise, so my setups had to be highly repeatable.
I looked into mortise machines, and as much as I wanted that Powermatic, I had a hard time justifying the $400 (with accessories) price tag for ...

Let me start by saying that I bought this plate for my first router table, so I don’t have any frame of reference for comparing it to other products. With that being said, I was impressed with the quality of the plate and the cutout template.
The price was right, at about $50 from Amazon. I was a little worried about getting a phenolic plate and the possibility of it warping when I hang my Hitachi M12V from it, but the plate feels very strong and stable. Only time will tell, but I...

Now I know what some of you may be thinking. Putting a JessEm MastRSlide on a Bosch 4000 is well, kinda like putting a bored out 350 engine into a Chevy Citation. But with the mastRSlide, I have been able to achieve very accurate and just as importantly consistent results with this set-up. While someday I hope to be able to afford a hybrid or full-blown cabinet saw, the mastRSlide has allowed me to take on projects that I otherwise would never have dared attempt on the Bosch 4000 alone.
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I had been shopping around for a router lift for some time now and would drop when seeing the prices. Then I came across this: http://www.jessem.com/Router_Lift_II.html . I’ve had it for a couple months now and have been able to give a good once over. It is my first and only router lift I have ever used so I cannot compare it to another (hence the 4 stars). But I can say it is fantastic. It has changed my whole table router world for the better.Being in the metal fab business for the le...

I have had the Mast-R-Lift II complete table system for about 6 or 7 monthes, and feel like it is time to do a review on it after using it extensivly. The package I got came with the stand, the table top, the fence, the mast-R-lift II router lift, power tek switch, reducing rings, and 4 parrallegram feather boards. To set up this whole system and get everything aligned took about 4 hours.
The stand is very sturdy and made of thicker material than the run of the mill open angle iron stand. ...

I just completed my first project using this jig after picking up the master set from JessEm . At the introductory price, it was a very appealing setup compared to what else was on the market.
JessEm shipped it out quickly and it arrived at my home safely a few days later. First impressions were that this was a very solidly made jig. Previously, I had been using the small clamp on beadlock jig from Rockler and was expecting something of the same heft. This jig will shock out when you s...

This is from an post originally in my blog. This is one sweet miter gauge and is highly recommended. It is a bit spendy and if I had thought things out more in advance I think I would have probably saved my money and gotten their sliding table. It is accurate, easy to set up and built like a tank. It has a 24” fence and can extend to 36”. The gauge has a Dual-Indexing Angle Location System that provides precise “positive stop” angle locating to every ½ degree an...

After messing around with a lot of home-made fence systems for my router table, I decided that for my newest table I would buy a fence and spend more time building furniture and less time building the shop. The fence is built incredibly well as has been my experience with all the Jess-Em products I have purchased.
Positives -
Fence stays centered on the table when sliding back and forth
Spilt sliding fence allows for very large router bits
Comes with jointing shims to bring half ...